Erasure, by Cherie Hunter Day

Erased de Kooning Drawing, by Robert Rauschenberg (USA) 1953

  

Erasure
 
"It’s not negation, it’s a celebration. It’s just the idea." 
Robert Rauschenberg
  
To experience an after, there must have been a before. Though it isn’t pure absence; it’s the near absence, the almost but not quite essence, we feel. There’s a time element, too, tinged with regret for not taking notice earlier. This looking without seeing haunts us like a ghost, like an unintelligible whisper. Only part of a vivid dream crosses the threshold into daylight. Someone is very busy with an eraser working to remove every trace. We fall back on what we know of objects and shadows. If shadows exist, then there must be corresponding objects. But here, there are no definable objects, only shadows. The picture frame corrals our attention. We should seriously consider what is enclosed. And yet without the artwork’s inscription we would never know what was missing. Like the scent of cologne in a vacant drawer, it conjures the memory of a lost love down to the pulse points and texture of their skin. The invitation stands, come pilot the empty.  
 
Cherie Hunter Day

Cherie Hunter Day lives in Auburn, New Hampshire, near Massabesic Lake. her work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Moon City Review, Rust & Moth, and Unbroken, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize  and Best Microfiction anthologies. Her most recent collection, A House Meant Only for Summer (Red Moon Press, 2023) features haibun and tanka prose. When not writing poetry and micro prose, or making collages, she is outside exploring the woods and avoiding ticks.